Thursday, August 1, 2013

Spy games

Entire authorial
careers (and reputations) have been built on the Cold War. But surprisingly,
not many writers have tapped into the rich vein that is the often fraught
relationship between India and Pakistan.

Over the past several months though, there have been half-a-dozen or so
books, written mostly by Indians, that have focused on South Asia and the
India-Pakistan equation. Of these, Shatrujeet Nath’s The Karachi Deception has
an intriguing plot, with a nice, punchy twist at the very end. The book itself
is, however, a frustratingly uneven read. More in this piece I did for last
month’s The Hindu Literary Review.